Album, Single and EP Reviews

Our Lament EP by Albion

I take some not inconsiderable relief in finding out that punk is not dead. The last musical genre to ever advocate protest still has its proponents and Ipswich band Albion are a most fervent one of them. Subtlety is therefore not a quality that you would expect and nor do you get it.

What you get instead is a sense of conviction that makes every one of the six songs on this EP seem marinated in honesty prior to being roasted and thrown across the room at you. The songs are smoking guns with the bullets being Jake Osborn’s vocals. Even at his most subtle – “Poison Ivy” – he takes no prisoners and, when the speed limit is being well and truly violated, you would believe that he has actual battery acid in his veins. The nihilistic bile of “This Is The End” makes for a fine example of this although the brutal “D.Y.N.R” – do you need religion? – isn’t far behind it.

Although I can’t see this band ever crossing the genre boundary into the mainstream, that does not, in any way, lessen the impact of these songs. Albion tell it like it is even though the masses have long since been lost to the dubious attractions of apathy.